HGV driver given community sentence for running over and killing 22-year-old cyclist waiting at red light

john_smith wrote:

It's pure dumb luck that we don't all kill people much sooner. I doubt there's a driver on the road who hasn't taken a risk or made a mistake at some time or other.

Presumably the irony is strong here, but of course it's not exactly either way.

There is a bit too much reliance on luck here - or "it's only other motor vehicles (with some protection)".  To make progress here likely requires several things.  The most draconian would be weeding out some of the worst drivers.  We treat driving like a club with an entry ritual but essentially open to all.  Perhaps some people are just not cut out for it?  Or were OK but have since declined?

Also - civil engineering / road and street design is a profession.  It's not simply about building stuff which doesn't have holes in / immediately fall apart - there's a large "human factors" part.  In the UK we already e.g. build motorways in curves with rumble strips at the edges - among many other "engineering solutions".

This is where the "Predictability" and "Forgivingness" parts of "sustainable safety" would emphasise ensuring that people's predictable risk-taking and fallibility doesn't immediately lead to them killing themselves or others.  That would involve eliminating some possibilities for error entirely, making it obvious what you should do, if possible providing feedback when you've made an error that can allow you to correct it and finally mitigate the severity of likely consequences.

Again - stuff we already do in UK road design but how we do that for "vulnerable road users" essentially involves removing them from the motor traffic.  So they lose their convenience OR safety (sometimes both).

Not really irony. I was simply responding to this:

"I hate that 'it's the first time this happened' is a valid excuse to not punish dangerous driving. It's pure dumb luck he didn't kill somebody sooner, not good driving or good judgement. Prior driving record should not be a consideration in sentencing of driving. "I didn't murder anyone for 40 years before now" isn't an excuse!"

It's true that the driver was lucky not to have killed someone earlier, but the same goes for all of us. I think fwhite181 should get off his high horse before he comes a cropper, but it's his choice.

Careful driving isn't luck. This wasn't careful driving. I'm my opinion, we should hand out driving bans more readily and then people would drive more carefully.

That might be, but it's still not a reason to make pronouncements on the gentleman's driving in the past.

I have my doubts about whether handing out more bans would make people drive more carefully. People who argue for capital punishment often follow a similar kind of thinking, and there's not a lot of evidence of its validity.

john_smith wrote:

That might be, but it's still not a reason to make pronouncements on the gentleman's driving in the past.

I have my doubts about whether handing out more bans would make people drive more carefully. People who argue for capital punishment often follow a similar kind of thinking, and there's not a lot of evidence of its validity.

You've conflated two different ideas there - increasing the number of punishments vs increasing the severity of punishments. The evidence suggests that people don't really respond well to increasing the severity (e.g. capital punishment) unless they believe that they are likely to get caught. By increasing the number of punishments, drivers are more likely to think that they may get caught - especially if some of their colleagues and friends are caught. Currently, a lot of drivers use their phones whilst in control of a car precisely because they know that there's very little chance of them getting caught. This is one reason why there's so much manufactured anger directed at cyclists using cameras - it's a very effective way of catching out the phone using drivers.

As HP wrote - the severity of punishment may be a factor but is often much less relevant than chance of getting caught.  (Assuming we're talking about crimes in which thought or at least social conditioning plays much part of course.)  And contrary to the folk wisdom that "they throw the book at you" in the UK the severity part is often low IMHO.

I'd agree with you in part - I suspect there's a built in (fairly low) limit on "police it better"* because costs grow rapidly, will the public accept it - and is it even wise for a democratic state to continue increasing the relative size of the police force?  However given the clear disinclination to police some road offenses (pavement driving, speeding, careless / dangerous) or police it at all in some places (Lancs, Scotland) I don't think we're that close to reaching that limit yet.

Also - even in a police state (god forbid) much comes down to an activity's social acceptability**.

I think - if we get beyond acceptance of the status quo - we'll maybe realise that laws or training are some less effective ways to make things safer.  Plus they won't make our streets nicer to be in or do much encourage more active transport.

* I've not seen numbers but suspect that for a given system of roads / vehicles / laws there is a baseline rate of death - because mass motoring (small rate of human failures which cause KSIs times a very large number of faillible, shortcut-taking humans).

In more detail that carnage will be divided between (1) a few who're almost certain to cause accidents in short order (road rage / serial unqualified drug drivers / speed demons / people not reporting their eyesight or cognition are failing etc.),  (2) "negligent / antisocial" types who might get away with things for longer (I suspect this is a larger group) and (3) the majority who will have a certain statistical chance of crashing because "indifferently trained human".  To be fair it may be that (4) "highly trained and motivated individuals" may have a lower risk also - but not many of them about...

Exactly how those contributions stack up I would like to know.  Clearly some people believe by far the biggest contribution is from group (1) (wrong'uns) - so we just need to catch 'em all somehow - and/or they just accept that from group (3) as an inevitable "cost of driving".

** Because there are always far fewer policemen than people so it's the culture of the informers e.g. people at large which is key.  Although more pervasive surveillance / automatic detection through technology may change the balance.

It's hard to get banned. Take a look at a dash cam compilation, what happens to all those drivers? Nothing. What happened to the driver who lost control of his Ferrari and drove it onto the pavement and into the bike racks in a 20mph zone? Nothing - a thumbs up from the police. There may be a lack of evidence for the effectiveness of capital punishment, but how about the evidence for the effectiveness of policing bad driving rather than doing nothing?

Hmm... they're definitely better, but (as we have been reminded recently) not perfect!

Clearly not absolutely, since if did, there would be no motor vehicles on the roads.

Well ... yeah?  Or rather - more might be e.g. on the rails.  Or the roads and vehicles would be rather different.

Some people (quite a few on here) feel that the the regulation vs. level of risk vs. ease of use calculus that we apply to operating motor vehicles is an outlier compared to other industries.  Yes - that will vary - but it's just way too casual in the case of driving.  As we've largely prioritised road freight authorities are under constant pressure from a wide number of interests to reduce the costs and ultimately regulation.